“Has anyone lived through an apartment building in DC with a hyperactive fire alarm, and had any success getting their landlord to get the system reinspected or changed?”

“Dear PoPville,

We live in a large apartment building on Connecticut Ave. near the Van Ness metro station. The fire alarm has always been a bit more over-eager in the building than others we’ve lived in — we’ve expected a few non-fire-related triggers each year, especially around when the heating system’s turned on for the first time in the fall. But lately it’s become almost impossible to deal with.

In the past three months the alarm system has triggered almost a dozen times, most recently this (Sunday) evening at 6:00 p.m. Once it triggered at 4:00 a.m., another time at 7:00 a.m., once at 10:00 p.m. There was a week where it triggered at least three times, twice within 24 hours.

The alarm is crazily loud and traumatically disruptive. During one recent evacuation, I noticed a group of four kids concerned about their disabled aunt still inside, countless upset cats and dogs (including our own), kids woken up from their bedtimes to a deafening alarm, and other similarly beleaguered tenants. A tenant I spoke with who has lived here for six years said she’s never seen it this bad, and it’s getting worse. We are now constantly on edge each evening (and often early morning) that our quiet enjoyment of our home might be disrupted by an alarm trigger.

We’ve tried talking to our building manager, who says the management company is aware but that the system is working properly and passed DC inspection. But he’s also admitted that the alarms are triggering as result of the sprinkler system tripping for non-fire issues — last month it was triggered by a truck hitting a sprinkler at the garage entrance, and a recent one was caused by a leak in the sprinkler system. A leaky sprinkler may require immediate repair, but it’s not an emergency incident that should require the entire building to evacuate late at night or early in the morning. With two potential exceptions, none of the recent triggers have been fire- or smoke-related at all (and even one of those was a contractor using a power tool in a poorly ventilated area — there was no actual danger to tenants). Setting aside how disruptive this is, both tenants and emergency services seem to slowly be trained to ignore the alarm. In one recent incident, the fire engine didn’t even have their lights or siren on when they approached.

Our understanding is that this frequent alarm triggering might violate DC code, but there’s no clear remedy for tenants available, and while management says they’re aware of the issue, we’ve seen no action taken to address the problem. Has anyone ever dealt with this in their building, and if so, were you able to do anything about it?

Best regards,
Vexed in Van Ness”